Archives for January 2019

Jordan Patterson’s
Story

Jordan
spent her first two seasons as the backup catcher for the University of Alabama
softball team. Coming to Alabama, she knew she’d have to pay her dues and earn
a starting spot. So, she showed up everyday with a positive attitude and worked
really hard: Coming early, staying late, and looking for those extra reps. She
was a great teammate; she was coachable, and she was grateful for the
opportunity to be part of the team.

Going
into her junior season, she thought her time had come. The players ahead of her
had graduated, and she had put in the work to earn the starting spot.

Except, her coach didn’t share the same vision, and in the off-season, he recruited another catcher. It didn’t take long for Jordan to realize her coach intended for this talented, new recruit to be their starting catcher. So, Jordan was gutted. How could he do this to her? Did he not believe in her? Was all her hard work over the last two years for nothing? Had she been fooling herself all this time, thinking she was good enough to play at Alabama?

Facing Adversity

Every day,
we face adversity from the second we wake up. Simply overcoming sleepiness to
get out of bed can be a challenge!

Now, if
it’s our own doing—like we stayed up late, watching TV—typically, we can get
over it pretty quickly. But, if it’s someone else’s doing—like our coach
planning a 6 AM —practice, negativity and excuses can creep in. It’s easier to embrace
and fight through adversity we have brought upon ourselves. But, when others’
choices create adversity for us, it’s a great deal harder to stay positive.

The adversity Jordan faced by remaining a reserve player—even after doing all the right things—is not uncommon. In fact, every team in the country at every level has a few Jordans of their own. You may even be that player! Let’s be real; being a reserve is the hardest role on the team! It’s one thing to work hard and have a good attitude when you are rewarded, but when you aren’t rewarded, it’s a whole different story!

The Hardest Moment

“Sometimes, you are going to put every ounce of your being into something, and it’s not going to work out exactly the way you wanted it to. You know what? That’s life. Get over it.” – Jordan Patterson

Reserves face some really hard moments: The games you
realize you aren’t going to get “your chance”, the days you feel unappreciated
by your teammates and coaches, and even those moments when your team wins big
and everyone is happy, but inside, you feel you don’t matter because the world
has told you that your value as a player comes only from the minutes you play
and the numbers you put up.

In these moments, you have a choice: ME or the TEAM!

Let’s get something clear: 99.9% of athletes believe they are a team player! But, more often than not, they are only a team player when things go their way. The problem is things don’t always go the way we want them to life. So, the question you must ask yourself is: Will you choose to serve your team the way you are asked to serve—even when you don’t feel like it?

Jordan’s Choice

“I kept working hard: Still came early and stayed late, but my motivations for doing so began to change. Instead of being motivated by the desire for personal success, I was motivated by the desire for team success.” —Jordan Patterson

If you
ask Jordan, you can still have one of the
best experiences of your life if you choose “team” before “me”.

In her
last two seasons at Alabama, Jordan made the choice to:

Believe she was a part of something bigger
than herself.

Realize
the positive impact she could have on others as a reserve.

Use the experience to shape who she was as a
person.

So, you have two choices: You can reject your role and quit on your team, or you can embrace your role and keep fighting!

8 Ways to Embrace Your Role and Keep Fighting

Regardless of your role, the team needs you to do two things:

Embrace your role.

Keep fighting.

These two things can appear to contradict each other. So, let’s break them down by first talking about what they are not:

Embracing is not believing:

The coach is an unfair
jerk who doesn’t realize you’re the better player.

You’re never going to get your chance, so there is no
point in working hard.

The other players were
just born more naturally talented than you.

Fighting is not:

Refusing to accept any feedback or be coachable.

Choosing a negative attitude to make sure everyone knows you are upset.

Resenting your teammates who are playing instead of you.

Embracing is about what we
choose to believe. Fighting is about how we choose to act.

Embracing your role is choosing to believe:

The coaching staff is making the best decision they can, based on the information they currently have.

Your job as a reserve is critical to the success of the team.

Your teammates have put in the effort needed to be the player they are today.

Your moment may come.

Fighting is choosing to:

Show up and give your best every day, so you can make a better argument to get more playing time.

Provide value to your team by pushing the starters in practice and encouraging them during games.

Be grateful for the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

Train and stay ready for the moment your team may need you in the game.

3 Simple Ways to Put First Things First with Your Team

Lost in Our Mission

In Mark Batterson’s book, Wild Goose Chase, he shares a study of some
seminarians, where the researchers had the students prepare a sermon about the Good Samaritan. For those who’ve
forgotten or who haven’t heard it before, the Good Samaritan is the parable in the Bible about multiple
people (including a priest and a Levite) who walk past a traveler who has been beaten
up by robbers and is lying in the road. Eventually, a Samaritan comes along,
and he is the only person to stop and help the man.

So, after these seminarians had
prepared their sermon, the researchers told the students they had to go across
the road to give their practice sermon. But, half of them were told they were
running late and needed to hurry. The other half were told they were early, and
they could take their time. On their way across the street to give their
practice sermon, the researchers planted a man slumped over, coughing and
appearing hurt.

The results were startling. Of these
seminarians preaching about the Good Samaritan, those who weren’t in a hurry
stopped and helped 63% of the time. But, the seminarians who were in a hurry only helped 10% of the
time. In one case, a hurrying seminarian was reported to have literally stepped
OVER the victim!

The lesson from this research is this: It’s not about whether we want to help. The thing that matters most is whether we are in a hurry or not! When we are in a rush, it make us indifferent and unsympathetic to others’ suffering.

Stop Hurrying

Batterson’s point was that the
priest and the Levite (the two men who passed by the man in the road before the
Samaritan helped) were probably in a hurry to love their neighbor and do good
things. They were just blinded to the most important thing!

This is just like us as coaches! We can get so busy with our mission that we forget what our mission is all about! Just think about your practices lately. Practice plans are great, and having an emphasis or an objective for the day is important. But how often do we over-plan or overemphasize the significance of “getting stuff done” at the expense of responding to the needs of our team and the people we are leading?

First
Things First

“You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.”

—C.S. Lewis

The most important thing you can do in today’s practice, team
meeting, or game is serve the needs of the people you lead. Sometimes, that
means other things will need to be put on the backburner during that practice.
That is putting first things first.

What does this look like? Here are
three examples:

Run an impromptu team meeting to discuss something that is upsetting certain people on the team.

Let your assistants run practice as you sit down to talk with a player one-on-one, about something they are struggling with in their life.

Enforcing the consequence of failing to practice hard by telling a player they have lost the privilege to practice and sending them home, even if losing them could screw up your plan. I explain more about this on Culture Builders 120.

All these moments—especially holding a standard, like not letting a player practice—may feel like you are experiencing a setback. Just remember this: These “setbacks” can actually be the steps forward you need to create your culture! More about this concept on Culture Builders 104.

The bottom line is this: If we don’t have the time to take care of what is most important now, then when will we have the time? As C.S. Lewis said, “Put first things first, and second things are thrown in; put second things first, and we lose both first and second things.”

2019 List

Embarrassed as ever, Daniel visited John after the game. John answered the door, and Daniel
walked right into his living room and fell into the oversized armchair. “What a complete disaster!
My team is so bad, and I was so blind to how bad we were. What a fool I am to think I could
have turned it around.”

With a stern look that Daniel had never seen before, John said, “There are no bad teams, just
bad leaders. Now, are you here to mope or are you here to get better?”

Daniel was taken aback by the tone in John’s voice. “Sorry, please tell me what you think.”

“Well, let’s listen to it,” John instructed. He had Daniel record his voice throughout the game,
from start to finish, so they could listen to it.

After only twenty minutes of Daniel’s pre-game talk, John laughed and said, “Stop it there;
no wonder your guys were asleep on the court. You put them to sleep before the game, droning
on and on. As a player, did you enjoy listening to a coach talk for that long?”

Daniel, a little embarrassed, said, “No, not really. Actually, it was horrible, now that I think of
it.”

“Exactly! So be kind and keep it short. I said the same thing every game, no matter what: ‘When it’s over, I want your heads up. And there’s only one way your heads can be up—that’s to give it your best out there, everything you have.’* Daniel, I didn’t diagram plays, scout opponents, or talk about our emphasis. If they hadn’t learned it yet, they wouldn’t learn it then.”

As they kept listening, Daniel became red in the cheeks, embarrassed by the amount of
yelling and how hard he was breathing. He could practically hear his heart beating through his
chest on the audio recording. After listening to the first half, half-time, and a few minutes into the
second half, John hadn’t said a word. Finally, Daniel turned it off and said quietly, “I can’t listen
to it anymore. I’m so embarrassed.”

John put his arm on Daniel’s shoulder. “Peaks and valleys belong in the Alps, not in the temperament or the emotions of a leader. What if we had put a camera on you and recorded your body language? Would that have said anything different?”**

“No, not at all. Probably just would have shown a crazy idiot. I know I lost it. I don’t know
what came over me.” Daniel’s shoulders sagged as he continued, “I was so annoyed by my
players’ body language when things weren’t going well. The referees missed calls because they
were focused on the wrong things, and the parents in the stands wouldn’t stop shouting at the
team instead of just cheering them on. But I guess I did the same thing. My body language was
out of control, my focus shifted completely to the uncontrollables, and I tried to control every
player in the game from the sideline!”

“Can you be a process coach if you react emotionally to the result? How about your time-
outs and half-time talks? Great leaders are good at listening. It’s difficult to listen when you’re
talking the entire time, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I definitely have to retrain my default mode of operation this season when it comes to
the games and applying my coaching principles to our performance. I messed this up at the first
smell of conflict. I’m totally ashamed that I was so fragile and unable to hold it together.”

Unwilling
to Change

My
high school basketball coach’s temper was legendary. He would pull players out
of the game when they made a mistake, and then rip into them right in front of
a packed gym. But, even more legendary to his players were the verbal barrages
he would unleash upon the team at half-time and the end of the game. As a junior,
I had come to understand and accept this was just how my coach was, and I could
expect that from him every game.

I
remember a game in my junior season when he wasn’t himself. He wasn’t doing a
whole lot of yelling, and we weren’t playing well, either. Something was up.

When
we made it to halftime, as I headed to the locker room, we all were very unsure
about my coach’s reserved first-half behavior. He hadn’t said much during the
game, but he looked redder and more pissed than ever, ready to come undone. Before
we could even sit down, he slammed the locker room door, and the volcano
exploded.

“I
tried! I tried to be nice and encouraging!” he said. “People tell me I am too
hard on you boys, and so I try to not to yell, and what happens? You go out
there and screw around! You play like a bunch of lazy bums.” As he paced around
the room, suddenly, his eyes set upon me. “And you play scared! You play like a p***y!”

I knew his comments were directed at me, the “weak boy” who couldn’t handle the screaming and criticism. My head wanted to drop between my knees, but I knew losing eye contact would only result in more anger and fury.

“Well,”
he continued, “I am done trying to change. I can’t change; this is who I am! So,
you’d better learn to toughen up and man up, because it isn’t going to get any
easier.”

He
was right. It never did get any easier.

Anger: The
Emotional Tip of the Iceberg

Psychologists
often use the metaphor of an iceberg to illustrate anger. 90% of an iceberg’s
mass is under water. Anger is just the tip of the iceberg; underneath the water
is something a lot bigger, some other physical or emotional pain. Before we
feel angry, we feel something else—the primary feeling. Anger is the secondary
feeling or emotion.

Coaching is an emotional profession. We experience a lot of emotions; one being the very powerful feeling of not being enough. As I have mentioned in past articles (The Coaching Identity Crisis), many of us easily find our identity and self-worth in our team’s achievement and performance, so when things don’t go well, they are making us look bad.

Our default response to these feelings of inadequacy, shame, and unworthiness is anger. We choose anger because it is how we have been coached and parented into reacting. We have to intentionally retrain our response to better serve people and be more authentic in who we are.

This
Isn’t Who You Are; You Can Change

My high school coach’s
statement, “I can’t change; this is who I am,” is problematic for many reasons:

Unwillingness to Grow: “I can’t change.” If you are unwilling to learn and
grow—unwilling to change, like my coach was—then how can you expect your
players to change? The irony of my experience as a player was that my coach
wanted me to change, be mentally tougher, be more in control of my emotions,
and be a better communicator. All the while, he had this unbridled anger he would
use to lash out at young men.

Cycle of Destructive Behaviors: The other sad part of my experience was I fell
into similar behaviors. While I was never “as bad as he was”, that became a
justification for my behavior as a coach. Coaches love to talk about how easy
players have it today, and how, in their day, they got it way worse. This talk
is just unconsciously justifying their anger and poor treatment of players.

False Authenticity: “This is just who I am.” We hear this a lot from people who provide
excuses for their behavior. When I would get angry and lose my temper on the
sideline, I would excuse this as just being myself. I thought, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I felt I
was being authentic, but just like my coach, I used anger to mask the
real emotions I was feeling. I was far from presenting an authentic and true
version of myself to the team.

When I am
authentic and true to myself, I will never become less than my best. When I am
authentic and true to myself, I won’t do anything that will harm myself or
anyone else. In fact, when I am true to who I am as a person, I help myself and
everyone else become better versions of themselves.

Take
Action

“Our culture
has taught you that, as a young man, you can never authentically show any
feeling other than anger. Unfortunately, anger is a secondary emotion. It
always comes from something else. But, showing anything else is seen as
weakness. So, your two choices are to be seen as weak or to get angry.”

—Joshua Medcalf

This article
isn’t meant to be a counseling session; rather, it is an encouragement to do a
few things:

Ask: “Where is this anger coming from? What is the primary feeling or
emotion?”

Remember: “I am coaching people, not objects. These people have wants,
needs, and desires that are no less important than my own.”

Act: Respond in accordance with
your principles and values, not your feelings or circumstances.